US President Donald Trump went radically off-topic during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Tuesday, veering into a tirade against transgender Americans — despite the discussion being meant to focus on trade.
Carney, whose child Sasha Carney is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, sat alongside Trump in the Oval Office during the televised meeting, as the former president launched into a bizarre attack on Democrats and the transgender community.
“We have strong borders. We have no men in women’s sports,” Trump said, unprompted, before adding:
“We’re not going to take your child away and change the sex of your child.”
The former president further claimed Democrats had turned America into “a dead country,” citing “men playing in women’s sports, and transgender for everybody, and windmills all over the place” as evidence of decline.
Carney Remains Silent
Carney, a former Bank of England governor, economist, and now Canadian PM, did not respond to Trump’s remarks during the meeting. He has previously supported his child’s identity, with Sasha speaking publicly in 2019 about their relief at being recognised as non-binary by their school while studying at Yale University.
Carney has four children with his wife, Diana Fox Carney, also a British-born economist.
Just the Latest Transphobic Outburst
Trump’s outburst is the latest in a long string of attacks on transgender people since beginning his second term as president. In January, he signed an executive order that removed federal recognition of transgender identities.
In recent weeks, he’s blamed Democratic lawmakers for the US government shutdown, falsely claiming it was tied to their support for trans rights.
In a Truth Social post from late September, Trump wrote:
“They are threatening to shut down the Government of the United States unless they can have over 1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens…
“Force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors… allow men to play in women’s sports… and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.”
No Basis in Fact
Trump’s statements have been widely debunked. Undocumented migrants are not entitled to free healthcare in the United States. Additionally, a 2019 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found only four recorded cases of gender-affirming surgery provided to minors under 18 that year — and none under the age of 12.
Despite this, Trump continues to push baseless, inflammatory narratives — ones that increasingly target transgender people and those who support them.
